Keeping Yourself Human
Working from home is great. I’m not even going to pretend that it’s not. The thirty second commute from my bed to my laptop is amazing. When I am able, as I was last summer, to take that laptop onto a balcony at the beach and work while the sun was coming up over the horizon was even more amazing.
The thing is, you want to be careful when you’re working from home. The solitude is great. Few interruptions, cow-orkers1 to distract you, the annoyances of a commute to bother you… it’s wonderful, right? For the freelance writer or computer programmer, one can make a decent living bidding on online freelance boards and never actually interacting face-to-face with a client. That’s heaven for we cranky introverts, isn’t it?
Recluse Figart is here to tell you that’s not quite so. English satirist and keen observer of human detail Terry Prachett once wrote in Men at Arms:
Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are . . . well . . . human beings. He was also spiralling inwards, as tends to happen in cases like this.
One of the challenges of the freelancer or anyone else in a solitary profession is the necessity of enough social contact to stay human. It sounds a little goofy and a little dramatic, but it’s true. If you don’t have regular contact with people, you’re going to lose perspective and lose your ability to deal well with people. That’s going to translate into a loss of marketing skill if you’re not careful, so it’s important not to let things get that far. You don’t want to start spiraling inward.
So, what do you do?
Like anything, it depends. I’d encourage anyone who worked from home to have some regular project that required you to leave that home sometimes. Maybe it’s church work, or maybe it’s a charity project. I have a part-time job working the front desk of my local gym. I chose it because it’s a low investment of time, it means that I have the use of the gym regularly and I’m forced to interact with people on a regular basis. It’s part of my job to be cheerful, perky and helpful. Believe it or not, keeping in practice with this is quite useful.
But it doesn’t have to be a part-time job or charity project. You could start a local meet-up for the freelancer, say a regular day of the week you meet for coffee and exchange ideas. It could be a hobby group you’re keen on. It doesn’t really matter as long as its fairly regular, gets you out of the house and ensures that you’re interacting with people to keep perspective and keep yourself human.
1An internet forum I used to participate in would refer to them as cow-orkers if they were irritating and co-workers if not.
Related posts:
- Intelligent Goal Setting
- Do You Recreate the Office When You’re Self-Employed
- Clock It with ClockingIT
- Online Profiles
- Do You Have Office Hours?
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